All about USP

Bandwagoning with America won't make India a great power, says N.V.Subramanian.

By N.V. Subramanian (30 November 2009)

30 November 2009: Prime minister Manmohan Singh is astonishingly and embarrassingly naive in his understanding of great power games and great power diplomacy. In the second part of his television interview to an Indian-American journalist given before his US tour but released now, the PM is quoted as saying that he hopes the United States will assist to get India official nuclear power status.

Whether the PM holds to that same view after his summit meeting with Barack Obama is not known, but the fact that the interview has been telecast would suggest that Manmohan Singh remains hopeful. Hopeful, that is, that the United States will use its influence to gain India the status of a NPT nuclear-weapons' state. Nope. That's not going to happen, not unless India changes its self-perception as an emerging power.
Manmohan Singh reckons that the Indo-US nuclear deal will build on itself to make India that aspired for NWS. As this writer has already noted (Commentaries, "Post Washington" and "No Washington takeaway"), Obama has put the nuclear deal on the backburner, and his own non-proliferation personal and ideological commitments are propelling him on a course where eventually it may get scuttled. Obama, and for that matter American presidential successors to him, will move more intensely and purposively on the non-proliferation road, especially to contain perceived rogue states like Iran, and to prevent the horror of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands. An NPT NWS status for India does not fit this agenda.
Comparisons to China, or France (although that comparison was not made), are pointless to the extent that a different set of circumstances brought them into the NPT fold. France, personifying General de Gaulle's fierce sense of independence and individualism, has always been a bit of a renegade in the great power games, but China was under pressure to join the NPT after France did. Also, China had been outed as a proliferator to Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, etc, which prevented any substantial high-tech dual-use technology cooperation with the advanced Western states lead by the US. To be sure, some dual-use technology, especially space technology, had flowed to China since it commenced its early-Seventies entente with the US to counter the USSR, but entering the NPT regime promised more.
What had China to lose entering the regime? It couldn't proliferate openly. There is some evidence that it has quietly assisted Pakistan's weapons' programme, especially its thermonuke ambitions, even after joining the NPT. Then it has refereed the WMD cooperation between Pakistan and North Korea, which it is using as a buffer in East Asia, learning its lessons from the NATO expansion against post-Soviet Russia.
But where China's comparison with India particularly does not hold is in the fact that it was a permanent UN Security Council member with veto power long before it became a NPT nuclear weapons' state. And that NWS status was additionally assisted by the fact that China tested its first nuke in 1964 before the NPT cutoff date of 1 January 1967. It is correct that the cutoff date is artificial and should not stand in the way of India becoming a NPT NWS, but one of the principal other roadblocks is in the way New Delhi perceives itself, which is most unlike an emerging great power.
How did Mrs Indira Gandhi make India a South Asian regional power, which is of course many rungs below where Manmohan Singh aims at? She saw the looming two-front crisis with Pakistan and resolved it, expanded Indian national territories, and conducted the first nuclear test so that India was never again threatened by US-manoeuvred regime change. At the great power level, similarly, the USSR was its own hegemon, able to influence international outcomes (yes, it lead to hubris in Afghanistan), and so has been China. China was rewarded for its hegemony and as an established actor in great power politics by being "invited" to become an NPT nuclear weapons' state. Where, on the other hand, has India made its presence felt as a great power actor with a capability to influence international outcomes?
It is not a chicken and egg situation, as it would seem to be. The argument cannot be that India overnight will acquire great power characteristics once it gains permanent membership of the UN Security Council with veto power and becomes a NPT NWS. These are not entitlements but have to be plotted for, fought for and persevered with, like Mrs Gandhi made India a regional power.
What Obama's predecessor, George W.Bush, did for India was without precedent, getting India de facto nuclear power status. Without Bush's initiative and follow up, that nuclear deal would not have happened. India had little role in its creation or in the NSG's "clean waiver" for civilian nuclear trade with New Delhi, and this is substantiated by the fact that with a new US president who appears less inclined towards India, both the deal and the NSG waiver look threatened. In other words, India has not woken up to the reality that unless it conducts itself as an emerging great power, it will never get due recognition.
In non-strategic language, India has to create its USP, as China has done, or as the Soviet Union once did. Bandwagoning won't assist in the long-run. For example, India is not part of the NPT. So how can it vote against Iran in the IAEA for not adhering to the NPT provisions? This is not about double-standards. India has inflexibly to pursue its self-interest if it seriously is to be taken as a world power. Going with a begging bowl to the United States won't help.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi).
Please visit N.V.Subramanian's blog http://courtesanofstorms.blog.com/ and write to him at envysub@gmail.com

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